BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto City Council tonight (June 15) backed off an emergency rule to block tall apartment buildings near Caltrain stations.
Housing advocates warned council that the rule would put the city at legal risk because council would need to declare an immediate threat to public safety.
“I have found no evidence presented that will allow me to make such a finding,” Councilwoman Julie Lythcott-Haims said.
Developers will have a window from July 1 to 15 to propose buildings up to 95 feet within 200 feet of a Caltrain station, up to 75 feet within a quarter-mile and up to 65 feet within a half-mile.
That affects areas around downtown, San Antonio Road and California Avenue, including a proposal for 37 apartments and two restaurants where Bank of the West used to be at 414 California Ave.
The city would have no choice but to approve projects under Senate Bill 79, a new state law by state Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco.
SB79 gives cities some flexibility to protect historic resources and to limit height and density to half of the law’s standards until January 2032. But Palo Alto’s limits won’t take effect for 30 days without the emergency declaration.
Councilman Pat Burt wanted to pass the emergency rule so the city didn’t allow a window for larger developments.
“The representations by members of the community that somehow us looking at this in a deliberate manner means we’re against transit-oriented development is false. And it’s demonstrably false. And we will continue to show that it’s false,” Burt said.
Mayor Vicki Veenker and Vice Mayor Greer Stone agreed with Lythcott-Haims, worried that an application to be designated as a pro-housing city would fail. Councilman Ed Lauing ended up on their side.
Councilmen Keith Reckdahl and George Lu were recused from the discussion.
SB79 affects 325 acres around downtown, including the Stanford Shopping Center and neighborhoods south of Forest Avenue.
Realistically, SB79 could add around 1,600 apartments downtown because many lots are too small to be developed, Planning Director Jonathan Lait said in a report for council.
California Avenue could get about 900 apartments from SB79, and the area by Mountain View’s San Antonio Caltrain station could get 200 apartments, Lait said.
I am disappointed in council members Vicki Veenker , lythcott -Haims and Stone who all voted to take an aspect of the city implementation of SB79 off consent and to spearhead a motion to leave a window open for fifteen days for projects that could really hurt residents and remove retail from our downtown and California avenue and Town and Country.
On July 16 the protection from full SB79 kicks in but all three voted against adding a little bridge law to cover the first 15 days.
Complicated issue and process to explain….But those three council members threw residents and business owners alike under the bus, potentially.
Let’s hope the 15 day loophole they opened doesn’t result in real harm for property owners, families and businesses.
City Council THEMSELVES voted to delay this item twice before (I’m pretty sure in March and in April), so it’s their own fault that there’s a 15 day gap. Had they voted on the item earlier this spring, there would be no gap.
…To vote on the urgency ordinance (the one that would cover the 15 days) they would have to find that housing is an immediate threat to public health or safety. That’s bs, housing isn’t threatening to public health, safety, or welfare. We need housing close to businesses like on Cal Ave, otherwise even more businesses will close for lack of customers.
I am disappointed in council members Vicki Veenker , lythcott -Haims and Stone who all voted to take an aspect of the city implementation of SB79 off consent and to spearhead a motion to leave a window open for fifteen days for projects that could really hurt residents and remove retail from our downtown and California avenue and Town and Country.
On July 16 the protection from full SB79 kicks in but all three voted against adding a little bridge law to cover the first 15 days.
Complicated issue and process to explain….But those three council members threw residents and business owners alike under the bus, potentially.
Let’s hope the 15 day loophole they opened doesn’t result in real harm for property owners, families and businesses.
Thank you council member Burt. Your knowledge of this matter and rational concerns should have prevailed.
Instead, Veenker with her sidekick Greer Stone backed Lithcott-Haims, knowingly left us vulnerable for 15 days when greed-head developers can irreversibly have their way with us.
Dir. of Planning Lait would not affirm Veenker’s assertion that all would be OK in those 15 days (she just makes stuff up).
So residents are left with nothing but hope that no amended or new application for gargantuan market rate towers is filed. A crap shoot.
Boo. Hiss.
Vicki Veenker , Lythcott-Haims and Stone … Shame, Shame and more Shame!
Julie Lythcott-Haims was unqualified for the job from Day 1. I remember when she was running for council and there were a couple of letters about her in the paper. She didn’t know about them until her mother let her know what was being written in the paper. She apparently doesn’t read the newspaper. She was profoundly ignorant about the community, and not interested in finding out. I’m glad she’s not running again, but it would benefit everyone if she were to quit now and for council to appoint a temporary replacement who knows what’s going on.
Not only is she profoundly ignorant she is WILLFULLY and aggressively so, lying about whatever / whenever it suits her divide-and-conquer narrative. I was first skeptical about her when she accused ALL her neighbors of being blatantly racist when her home was being built, so racist they were leaving messages on her door.
How odd I thought until I looked up her address and saw photos of her huge home built on top of a berm towering over her neighbors’ one story homes. How, I wondered, could someone pitching “housing everywhere” and neighborhood involvement be so dismissive of her neighbors and issues like neighborhood character? I dug some more and learned how she’d terrorized her elderly neighbors AND intimidated them from speaking out in the same way she’s lied about so many things: calling a political opponent a supporter of Jim Crow and refusing to apologize publicly, claiming PASZ was THE “loudest voice in the room” and thus bigger than all her huge deep-pocketed backers, forcing the ouster of Carol Garsten from 3d Thursday by citing a mysteriously unseen petition while ignoring a REAL petition showing 77% of the Cal Ave businesses supported Garsten, lying that the Gunn student petition demanded the closure of Churchill when it really advocated bringing back crossing guards, her “mean girl” texts aimed preventing closer looks into the school’s role in teen suicide because “those advance math people” might raise questions about math test scores when test scores fallen so badly that CA universities are bringing back SAT tests….
She lied about why she was forced to leave Stanford, ran for CC under false pretenses and then sued to change the outside income provisions ..
Stone and Veenker finally responded to her lies by QUIETLY removing her from commissions dealing with Stanford and kids/students without censure and then a year later MORE QUIETLY reinstated her to those commissions AND named her to MORE commissions focusing on the same issues and other key commissions.
I echo Martin’s comment above — “Vicki Veenker , Lythcott-Haims and Stone … Shame, Shame and more Shame!” — and for enabling Lythcott-Haims since Mayor Veenker needs a reminder that her endless puerile virtue-signalling is no substitute for integrity.
She called me a racist once on a non-racial issue. I decided at that point to bow out of civic affairs in Palo Alto. Her technique works. Nobody wants to have their reputation tarnished by her unfounded attacks. Glad she’s not running again. Wish she hadn’t knocked Joe Simitian out of the race for Congress.
KL, sorry you felt you had to bow out of civic affairs in PA and you’re unfortunately right that her technique works — just like it worked for those claiming Hillary Clinton ran a child sex=traffic ring out of the DC pizza parlor’s basement and some guy showed up with his shotgun to save the children — only to find the pizza parlor had NO basement. Oopsie.
Demagoguery sells and “alternate facts” often win the narrative.
Two recent examples: her “listening session” re the suicide near Gunn to silence those who disagreed with her by making then seem like they supported suicide for all and her more recent midnight ploy pushing PAF’s agenda without having read or understood it before pushing it — and getting caught by Pat Burt.
Everything is “racist” if anyone disagrees with her while she lets racist / antisemetic comments directed at others stand as she did when antisemetic remarks were directed at Ed Lauing in CC chambers.
One of JLH’s early newsletters said she decision to run for CC to end the scourge of racism shown by her white college classmates because only they grew up understanding that credit card bills had to be repaid — as if she came from some poor uneducated ghetto family instead of having highly paid professional parents who paid for her prep school education in Madison, Wisconsin. (Yet her she sits on the CC FINANCE Committee._
“Her father (George Ignatius Lythcott) was a nationally known pediatrician and professor of public health who worked at Columbia University and UW Madison. He notably served as the Assistant Surgeon General under President Jimmy Carter. Her mother (Jean Snookes): She worked as a teacher and was a professor of education at Columbia University Teachers College.”
One wonders how she raised more $$$ than other CC candidates without having served a day in office and what possessed her to run against Simitian when she hadn’t even completed a term as a cc member? Was it collusion with Stanford who knew Simitian would closely examine their never-ending expansion plans or simply her egotistical delusions?
The big question is why Mayor Veenker and Vice Mayor Stone continue to enable her blindly without fact checking. Are they hoping to ride her fund-raising talents to higher office?
@KL, I’m sorry you have bowed out of Palo Alto civic activities due mean spirited persons. What these people do is cancel, erase, intimidate, and demean people, so they can create fear. Please don’t let them do that to you.
I don’t recall the name of the group, but at some point there was a local group (not PAF) that advocated for smart growth. Please, group, reactivate!
I’d feel a lot more comfortable building these skyscrapers if councilperson Julie
Whatever acknowledged publicly that they’re being built on stolen land. (And when is she going to give her house to the Big Wampum tribe that used to inhabit Palo Alto?)